The BBC is playing a dangerous game...

I don't want to tell anyone how to Who, but dang, a hundred minutes? Yeah, what am I talking about? I'd want to know too. I'm talking about the BBC colorizing--sorry--colourizing, re-editing, re-scoring, and streaming a Doctor Who story arc from 1963. 

I'm not sure what original Who actor William Hartnell would have
thought of all this. He looks outraged, but I think that's just his face.

How a people who endured the Blitz
found these things menacing is a mystery.

Old timey Doctor Who tended to tell stories over multiple episodes. In this case, seven of them. It's the first one with the Daleks which, for people who have never watched Who, are like that show's big bad. Basically the Klingons, if Klingons were faceless, barely mobile trashcans. They're probably one of the most recognizable elements from Doctor Who, maybe more so than any particular incarnation of the Doctor. So it makes sense that they'd want to trot it out again for the series' 60th anniversary. 

But colourized and running seventy-five of the original arc's one hundred and seventy five minutes? Kind of feels like a risky move what with fandom. I mean, have the BBC ever met a Doctor Who fan?

Trust me, you'd know. They will 100% tell you.

Which is to say the pacing is rapidly
melting with disastrous consequences?

Look, I like Doctor Who. It's charming and quirky. I mostly got into it with the 2005 revival with Christopher Eccleston. I've watched some of the earlier shows and I totally get the impulse to cut it down. I don't know if it was just the style of British television in the 60's and 70's, or if they were trying to stretch two episodes worth of story into a multi-part arc, but the pacing is glacial and hard to go back to if you were first introduced to the twenty-first century version of the show. It's charming, but sloooow.

That said, fans of things beloved sci-fi series aren't exactly famous for embracing change. The internet is regularly set ablaze every time new changes made to original Star Wars movies. Fortunately, the BBC isn't pulling a George Lucas here, and the un-touched version of the story will continue to be available. Still though, I wonder is they realize they're playing with fire here.

That's not to say the vitriol isn't sometimes justified.